Sam Shaw, Photographer, Film Producer

NEW YORK — Sam Shaw, a film producer and photojournalist famous for his photographs of Marilyn Monroe standing over a subway grate with her skirt billowing, has died at age 87.

Mr. Shaw died Monday in a Westwood, N.J., hospital.

Born and raised on New York City's Lower East Side, Mr. Shaw's artistic talents were evident even as a boy, when, without money to buy supplies, he would gather up tar from the streets and make sculptures of animals.

After a brief stint as the art director for the Brooklyn Eagle, he began his career as a photojournalist with Colliers magazine in the 1940s. Alongside journalist Harry Henderson, he traveled the United States to create memorable photographs of West Virginia miners, Southern sharecroppers and New Orleans jazz musicians at work in their environs.

His name became synonymous with the covers of Life and Look magazines in the 1950s and '60s.

While shooting Marlon Brando on the set of "Viva Zapata!" in 1952, he met Monroe, then a struggling contract player who had been assigned to drive Mr. Shaw to various film locations.

Her star had risen by 1955, when Mr. Shaw was hired to shoot a poster for director Billy Wilder's "Seven Year Itch." Before a huge crowd, Monroe re-enacted the scene from Wilder's film in which she crossed a subway grate as a rush of air from a passing train caused the skirt of her white dress to soar.

In 1961, Mr. Shaw tried his hand at producing with "Paris Blues," starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier and Louis Armstrong. He went on to produce films for John Cassavetes, including "Husbands," "A Woman Under the Influence," "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie," "Opening Night," "Gloria" and "Love Streams."